Faiyum

It was very early morning when we left Minya and the weak daylight was fighting with the thick mist rising from the river as we drove north on the long journey towards Cairo. We were travelling on the road along the west bank of the Nile rather than the faster but boring desert road and we had several changes of police escort as we passed from one traffic district to the next. I slept much of the way in the back of the taxi, snugly bundled up in my fleece and a heap of blankets because the air was cold and damp and we’d had a late night last night, Jane and I talking into the small hours. Near Beni Suef Abdul stopped and bought a big bag of delicious hot falafel for breakfast from a roadside stall and by the time we had stopped a little later for a couple of cups of strong black ‘ahwa I was feeling more awake. The Beni Suef police came as far as Meidum with us and then we were free at last. For the first time in a week and a half we no longer needed to be escorted as we came closer to Cairo.

I think we were all feeling tired from our travels of the last week and by the time we arrived at Meidum Pyramid none of us felt like making much of an effort. The mist had cleared but the sky was still leaden with cloud and a cool breeze made us shiver at the exposed site. The pyramid was open but no-one felt like going inside. We walked around the strange-looking structure, a bizarre tower built in steps, three of which remain without the casing stones, surrounded by a huge mound of rubble around the bottom of the pyramid. Generally ascribed to the Dynasty IV king Snefru, it is thought to be the earliest ‘true’ pyramid; i.e deliberately designed in seven steps in a pyramid shape. From a distance it reminds me of the ‘Devil’s Tower’ in the Close Encounters movie. The most interesting feature here is the small offering chapel on the eastern side which was probably a forerunner to the later larger mortuary temples. Two very tall stelae are still in situ on either side of the entrance but were left uninscribed. Meidum pyramid also had the new feature of a causeway – almost 200m long, which probably ended in a valley temple that so far has not been discovered, but the causeway can be clearly seen.

It is well known that Snefru went on to practice his pyramid building at Dashur – the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid were both built by this king. There is also a tiny step pyramid at Seila, which has recently been attributed to Snefru during excavations in the late 1980s. It is still unknown why Snefru abandoned the Meidum pyramid and his residential city of Djedsnefru with its necropolis to move to Dashur, as it seems likely that the Meidum structure did not collapse until at least the New Kingdom. Snefru’s pyramid at Meidum was surrounded by many private burials of Dynasty IV – the first newly established elite cemetery since the archaic necropolis at Saqqara. The mastaba cemeteries are located to the north and east of the pyramid and provided some of the most well known of the Old Kingdom statuary and paintings, especially two of my favourite pieces, the ‘Meidum Geese’ from the tomb of Nefermaat and the statue of Rahotep and Nofret from Rahotep’s mastaba, both now in Cairo Museum. A couple of the decorated mastabas were open but they were about a kilometre away, unlit and we couldn’t take photographs, so we didn’t bother walking over to them. We were all feeling so lazy today!

From Meidum we drove a little further north to el-Lisht, where we stopped at a little village called Barnasht for coffee. The village is on the edge of Faiyum and at first Abdul missed the turn by about 20km and had to turn around and drive back again. While we were having coffee there was an incident with some boys who spat at us and the taxi, making Abdul very angry and resulting in a shouting match. I don’t know what it is about this area that makes the local youth so unfriendly towards tourists – we had the same thing at el-Lahun, the only place in Egypt I’ve come across this reaction. It felt very threatening and we were only too glad to get back in the car and drive on to the pyramid site.

There are two pyramids at el-Lisht built by Amenemhet I (the northern pyramid) and his son Senwosret I (the southern pyramid). We arrived first at the southern pyramid and had to park the taxi and walk as Abdul was worried about getting the car stuck in the soft sand. This is the larger of the two Middle Kingdom structures here and some of the limestone casing is still preserved on the lower parts. The pyramid itself however, is little more than a low mound. The complex is surrounded by a double perimeter wall, the first enclosing part of the king’s mortuary temple on the eastern side (now mostly destroyed) and a small satellite pyramid at the south-east corner. The inside of the first perimeter wall was uniquely decorated with panels of reliefs with the king’s names and images of fertility gods, which we could see quite clearly. Nine more secondary pyramids for female members of the king’s family were found inside the outer mudbrick enclosure wall.

A short distance away is the older northern pyramid of Amenemhet I. We could see it in the distance but couldn’t find how to get there until we spotted a modern Muslim cemetery on the edge of the site. Originally over 55m high the pyramid today is sadly depleted to around 20m which is due not only to ancient robbing of its materials but also to its poor construction method. Pyramid building had declined since the glorious monuments were built at Giza, and although some stone from earlier structures was used, much of the pyramid was constructed with unfired mudbricks. The small funerary temple on the eastern side is now almost completely gone with only a few blocks remaining. Several mastaba tombs of members of the royal family and high-status officials were found inside the inner wall of the complex, and on its western side there are 22 shaft tombs for the royal women, wives and daughters of the king, some of whose names have been found. By the time we left this site the sun had come out and was shining weakly even as it was beginning to set.

We drove on past Saqqara and into Cairo, arriving in the peak of the rush hour, but Abdul did the run into the city in record time considering the clogged up roads. After being on the road for ten days the Caio Hotel actually felt like home.

We had a good send off from our hotel on Birket Qarun this morning. Maybe they were keen to get us off their hands, because for the first time this week we managed to get permission from our police guards to be away by 9.00am, knowing that we had a very long and busy day ahead. The policeman we have named ‘The crazy One’ rode with us in the taxi while Chief Ashraf and his troops rode shotgun in their truck in front of us, driving right through the Faiyum as far as the bridge at el-Lahun. On the bridge I disgraced myself by attempting to take a photograph of the Bahr Yussef Canal through the taxi’s window of what I thought was a pretty rural scene with little boats fishing in the waters below the bridge. This almost caused the Crazy Policeman to have a heart attack because unbeknown to me taking photographs anywhere on or near bridges in Egypt is strictly forbidden. Luckily I was yelled at and stopped before my finger hit the shutter button – otherwise I might have been slung into jail and the key thrown away.

At the other side of the bridge, the border between Faiyum and Beni Suef traffic areas, the ‘handover’ took place. At the checkpoint we all got out of our vehicles and there were handshakes and hugs all round. Chief Ashraf, damp-eyed (with relief I suspect) bid us all a fond farewell and made sure Abdul had his mobile number for emergencies before a rather large tip was passed over in gratitude for their ‘assistance’. We were then officially handed over to the Beni Suef police and several troops piled into their truck and waved us to follow behind. Our first stop today was Ehnasya el-Medina, a site on the southern edge of Faiyum.

This vast ancient site covers about 67 hectares of land on the edge of the desert, which my notes told me, had been occupied since the First Intermediate Period. As soon as we got out of the car we were mobbed by village children but the police soon chased them away good-naturedly and we walked over to a fenced-off area that was the site of current excavations by a Spanish team. I had done my homework and knew a little of what was going on here and we looked down into a deep pit where mudbrick and stone tombs from the Third Intermediate Period were being cleared. This area revealed burials from Dynasties XXI to XXVI but were re-used tombs for successive generations which must have been confusing to the excavators. Many important Libyan names have been found here giving much information from this obscure period of history, especially on the political and religious links between Ehnasya and Tanis, the Libyan capital.

In ancient times the town was called Henen-nesw and was capital of the 20th Upper Egyptian nome. Although there wasn’t a great deal for us to see, the site felt full of history. It was from this city that the rulers of Dynasties IX and X originated, who later came into conflict with the early rulers of the Theban Dynasty XI. Henen-Nesw was the cult centre of the ram-headed god Herishef during pharaonic times, a deity which the Greeks identified with their Herakles, giving the town its classical name of Herakleopolis Magna. The existence of a town at here at Ehnasya el-Medina continued into the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Periods and the extensive remains of the ancient city incorporates a number of cemeteries and temples spanning the Middle Kingdom to Roman periods. We walked over to the south-western side of the site to a boggy area where we found the scant remains of a Temple of Herishef, founded in the Middle Kingdom. The scattered blocks and statue fragments that we could see date to Rameses II who enlarged and added to the temple. Some of the reliefs were wonderful and depicted the god Herishef who I had never seen before. Unfortunately the sand has encroached and the ground-water has risen so much that the plan of the temple was difficult to see but it was great to see some Pharaonic reliefs after all the Roman stuff in the Faiyum during the past week. We did end up in the Roman part of the site, however, where there were a few standing columns and what we thought may have been part if a gateway. Behind this across a vast empty area of sand, the modern village of Ehnasya el-Medina, itself looking very old, romantically stood on a mound like a fortress, with a white-painted Sheikh’s tomb a the bottom of the hill. I must say, our Beni Suef police were very patient, giving us all the time we needed to wander around the site with the gafir, who unfortunately spoke no English, but the day was passing and it was time to move on.

We drove on for about 20km along the edge of the cultivation to the modern village of Dishasha, not far from the Bahr Yussef Canal. Here, the police picked up a gafir and we turned into the desert, following a sandy track that the police seemed to know but we could barely see, towards the escarpment where a cemetery of Old Kingdom tombs are built into a ridge, high on the cliff above the plain. We got out of the taxi and were faced with a very long steep flight of steps leading up the cliff and as the gafir had already started ahead, we followed, a little more slowly behind him, climbing up to the terrace. The gafir was a tiny wiry-looking man with a wrinked face, and looked like he had already seen his 80th birthday, but he had made the climb in half the time it took Jane, Sam and I to puff and pant our way up the steps. At the top, however, the view was magnificent – or at least it would have been if there had been anything to see. There was just flat open desert stretching out on every side as far as the eye could see – pure emptiness – with only Abdul’s taxi and a police truck like toys far below us. We turned around on the narrow terrace and began to look at the tombs. These, for the most part were sand-filled and derelict but there was one important tomb that we knew about and wanted to see, the Dynasty V tomb of Inty, which contains a rare relief depicting a siege of a fortified town and industrial scenes including woodworking. Inty’s tomb was closed by a stout metal door and when we asked the gafir to open it he indicated that he hadn’t brought the key! The three of us just looked at him in disbelief and I thought Sam was going to explode. After that monstrous climb we couldn’t even get into the one tomb that was accessible. Why oh why hadn’t the gafir mentioned this down there at ground level? But nothing can be taken for granted in Egypt and I guess we should have made it clear that we would have liked to go into the tomb. We pottered around the open courtyards of the other tombs but there was little to see apart from one very worn relief of a hes-pot carved into a disintegrating wall. By the time we got back to earth, my thigh muscles felt like jelly. At least Abdul and the policemen had a good laugh with the gafir about it when we got back to the cars. We were not so amused!

Maybe it was to make up for our disappointment, but the police told us to follow them and we travelled on to another unscheduled stop at a site near a little village called Mazura, again on the edge of the desert, somewhere between Biba and el-Fashna, on the west bank of the Nile to the south of Beni Suef. There was a gafir here too, who was willing to show us over the site, but unfortunately he spoke no English – and very little Arabic come to that. None of us knew anything about the site or had ever heard of it, but as we walked over the shallow sand covered hills that were strewn everywhere with pot-sherds we realised that it was something important. The gafir did go as far as to tell us the name of the site, Kom el-Ahmar, which means ‘Red Hill’ and which is quite a common name for red-pottery covered sites in Egypt. There were many graves of different types, some of them were pits in the sand and some were brick-lined. There was also a limestone paved platform and low remains of stone and brick walls which must once have contained a structure (temple or shrine?) but we had no idea of the period this is dated to. The site was bounded by a small canal and the village of Mazura was about 1km away. Closer to the village there was another area covered in broken pottery and lying by the track there were large sections of plain round columns scattered haphazardly on the ground. A real mystery site that was not marked on any of the detailed maps we had.

We had originally intended to travel straight from the Dishasha tombs to Beni Suef, cross the bridge there to the east bank and get onto the long desert road all the way to Minya. Our diversions had already added a couple of hours to our afternoon, but when the police suggested we stop at a roadside cafe for coffee we were all more than ready for a drink. It was there that they told us they could arrange for us to visit the ancient town of Ankhyronpolis at el-Hiba if we would like it. Abdul looked a bit worried, but Sam, Jane and I jumped at the chance to see yet another out-of-the-way site. The Beni Suef police had really been fantastic and seemed to understand (unlike most Egyptians and especially tourist police) that we wanted to visit every site we could. While they made the arrangements, we had our coffee and were ready to set off again, not over the bridge as we had expected, but on a precarious ramshackle car ferry over the Nile straight from el-Fasha to el-Hiba, which at least cut quite a lot of time off the journey. We said our goodbyes and thanked the friendly Beni Suef police at the ferry and were met at the other side by police from the el-Fashna traffic district. It felt rather like a game of pass-the-parcel!

The journey from the ferry to el-Hiba wasn’t far, just a few kilometres following the Nile under the high cliffs of the escarpment, but by the time we got to the site the sun was fast going down. El-Hiba is the site of ancient Tuedjoi. Now thought to have been founded at least as early as the New Kingdom, the town was an important frontier fortress on the northern limits of the Theban region during late Dynasty XX to Dynasty XXII and a temple was built here at that time, probably by Shoshenq I. Although there was continued habitation through the following centuries, the town regained its military importance under the name of Ankyrononpolis during the Graeco-Roman Period.

The huge area of mudbrick ruins of the town sprawled before us from the edge of the Nile up the hillside, bathed golden in the late afternoon sun. There was a spectacular view from the top, overlooking the surrounding plain to the River. We had a quick look around and investigated the small temple thought to be built by Shoshenq I, now bisected by the modern road. The walls were very low and mostly ruined but the whole scene was beautiful in this lonely place. It was a real bonus to be able to visit this site.

As darkness began to draw in, we eventually joined the desert road that goes from Cairo to Asyut. I knew Abdul had hoped to arrive in Minya in daylight and I could see that he was already tired from today’s driving. The desert road is long and straight, with no distractions and we still had about another 150km to go. On the way we were stopped by a terrible accident, involving a lorry and trailer that had overturned onto the edge of the desert. These flat-bed lorries that pull long trailers are incredibly dangerous as they sway from side to side with the weight piled too high on top and I’ve already seen several in Egypt that have been overturned as they hit the camber of the road. As we stopped and our police escort jumped out of their truck it was obvious that the accident had happened only minutes before we arrived. The driver’s mate was climbing out of the smashed window of the lorry, very shaken but unhurt, but the police soon came to tell us that the driver had been killed and that we must wait for an ambulance to arrive from Minya. The whole incident was so tragic and we were all feeling quite shocked and very subdued by the time we were able to leave the scene an hour later. When we eventually arrived in Minya around 9.00pm we stopped at the first cheap hotel that would take us and went quietly off to bed, it was such a sad end to a really lovely day.

The weather by the lake seems to get cooler with every passing day. This morning brought a strong breeze and the solid mass of dark cloud hanging over the horizon made me thankful that we were driving in the opposite direction towards Medinet el-Faiyum. As usual our police escort weren’t prepared to move before 10.00am and it was almost a two hour drive to our first destination, the Middle Kingdom pyramid of Amenemhet III at Hawara. Turning off just before Faiyum City we drove through a pretty valley scattered with small villages and many of the typical Faiyum dovecotes, strange white cake-like structures where the farmers raised their pigeons. Eventually we arrived at the Hawara necropolis, on the southern edge of Faiyum and were met by the Gafir, who seemed delighted to see us.

King Amenemhet III had already built a pyramid to the north of here at Dahshur and this was his second attempt – his earlier ‘Black Pyramid’ having suffered structural stresses during construction. His grandfather had also constructed a pyramid near here at el-Lahun. This was a region that was very popular during Dynasty XII as a pleasure-ground where kings and nobles could enjoy fishing and fowling in the marshes and hunting the many wild animals in the desert areas. It was probably an obvious choice for the King’s last resting place. The gafir showed us all around the site and we looked at each side of Amenemhet’s pyramid, with its reinforced mudbrick core once encased in white limestone now exposed so that we could see how it was constructed. Within the pyramid enclosure there is thought to have been an extensive mortuary complex which classical authors referred too as ‘The Labyrinth’, described by Herodotus as having been constructed from a single rock and to contain three thousand rooms connected by winding passages and courts. Strabo called the complex ‘a palace composed of as many smaller palaces as were formerly nomes’, that is, forty two. Unfortunately this unique building is now so ruined that all we could see were heaps of sand and rubble bisected by a modern canal. There were one or two carved pieces of stone lying about, including fragments of lotus columns and remains of a fine white limestone relief that had once depicted crocodiles. The gafir also showed us over the Roman town site on the northern side of the pyramid where there were several earlier mastabas as well as many graves and in one we even saw a skeleton lying there half exposed. Though I can’t usually get very excited about pyramids I found this site interesting as it was the last major pyramid complex built in Egypt.

After a couple of hours at Hawara we drove on to the town of el-Lahun, which I have to say felt very hostile. The police car had driven on ahead of us leaving Abdul to deal with youths and children who were having fun hitting his taxi with sticks and throwing stones at us as we drove through the narrow streets of the town. Seems that tourists are not welcome here! Once through the town we drove alongside a huge mudbrick embankment for several kilometres that was built by Amenemhet I and said to mark the southern edge of the ancient Lake Moeris. The pyramid of Senwosret I at el-Lahun is an impressive size though now in a ruinous condition. We could see the natural outcrop of yellow limestone spokes around which the structure was built, protruding from the rubble of the mudbrick fill in some places. This too would have been covered in white limestone. It is unusual because its entrance is not, as would be expected, on the northern side but through a vertical shaft several metres east of the southern side and beneath the floor of an unknown princess’s tomb, probably in an attempt to deceive robbers. We walked all around the structure, which is bounded by a row of eight large mastabas on the northern side and we saw a smaller queen’s pyramid on the north-east corner. Petrie and Guy Brunton investigated here in 1914, and on the south-eastern side, found the famous ‘Lahun Treasure’ while excavating the tomb of Princess Sit-Hathor-Iunet. This was a spectacular Middle Kingdom hoard of exquisite jewellery and cosmetic vessels that can now be seen in the Cairo Museum and the Met in New York.

To the North is the King’s pyramid town, established to maintain Senwosret’s mortuary cult, consisting of blocks of workers’ houses and larger villas for the officials. This town, known by the modern name of Kahun, was at the time of discovery the only extant example of a complete pyramid town, and when Petrie excavated it in 1889 it was found with much of its ancient furnishings in place. The town has been the source of a great deal of valuable information about the domestic lives of its inhabitants. Petrie also found an enormous quantity of papyri in Kahun, consisting of contemporary documents relating to wills, medical texts, astronomical texts and the only known veterinary papyrus as well as various letters, accounts and administration documents. Many of these ‘Kahun texts’ come from the temple archive and include religious documents from the period. They are now preserved in Cairo, University College London and Berlin. We decided not to walk the kilometre distance across the desert to the town site because it has now been back-filled and there was little to see.

The drive back through el-Lahun town wasn’t so bad because we had a policeman in the taxi with us. Abdul is inordinately careful with his Peugeot – his main source of income – and he will clean and tend it lovingly at every opportunity. When the boys had been hitting it with sticks Abdul was furious at the damage they may cause, but even so I was surprised that his fury wasn’t taken out on the culprits and that he had a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude to the vandalism. Abdul, like most Egyptian men, always surprises me with his gentle and tolerant manner towards children. On the way back to Medinet el-Faiyum we stopped for gas at a garage at the entrance to the town where we saw, standing in the centre of a traffic roundabout, the red granite obelisk, or more accurately an obelisk-shaped stele that had originally been erected by Senwosret I in the village of Abgig, near Itsa to the south of Faiyum. It had been broken in two and was restored and re-erected here in 1971, but we could see little of the very worn inscription. The ‘Abgig Obelisk’, as it is called, stands at 13m high. We drove on into the town and parked in the square by one of Faiyum’s famous landmarks, the unique wooden waterwheels that were first introduced here by the Ptolemies. The wheels are said to number around two hundred throughout the region, where water from clear, fast-flowing streams, powers the wheels to irrigate the agricultural fields. We saw four of these huge black solid wheels in operation in the centre of town. Nearby there was a stall selling colourful baskets, one of Faiyum’s main crafts. These are woven from palm leaves, rice stalks or straw in red, green and pink and the variety of designs look very attractive. I decided I wouldn’t be able to get one home, tempting though they were. Abdul wanted to go to the mosque so Mr Ashraf the police chief, took Sam, Jane and I on a mini-tour of his city, ending up at a coffee shop to wait for Abdul. Later we had a very good meal in the city before going back to the Panorama Hotel to pack. Tomorrow is our last day in Faiyum.

If we’d been staying in Faiyum City today’s trip would have been a lot easier, but opting to stay by the lake meant a long and bumpy drive across the desert to our first stop today at Medinet Madi. This site is said to be the one of the most difficult places to get to in the whole of Faiyum, but it is the site I most wanted to see – one of the most important sites too because it contains a Middle Kingdom Temple, which are rare in Egypt. We had a police escort with us in the taxi as well as several in a car up ahead, which was just as well because Abdul wasn’t too sure of the way and luckily they knew how to get to the site.

After leaving the south-western end of Birket Qarun and driving east along the desert road, we eventually reached a remote village called Abu Ghandir, where to my surprise we turned off straight across the sand. There was no track to follow but the police car ahead was making straight towards a sandy ridge in the distance and I’m sure as he was zigzagging about Abdul was praying that his taxi wouldn’t get stuck in the powdery sand. We stopped at some distance from the ridge, not able to go any further and we were told that we had to walk the rest of the way and climb up the mound. That was fun – one step forward and three backwards in the deep sand! At the top we found a little square hut and a gafir and looking down the other side of the ridge I could see the temple buildings and town site stretching out below me half-buried in the sand. Accompanied by the gafir we slid down the bank and walked to the entrance to the site where many stone sphinxes and lion statues were poking their heads out of the sand. Apparently they regularly appear and disappear as the desert blows over them. The light here was dazzlingly bright. The temple is constructed from pale golden limestone blocks which hurt the eyes to look at and played havoc with the exposure on my camera, but I thought it was very beautiful. There are teams of archaeologists who are currently excavating here but today nobody was about and it felt so remote and lonely and quite romantic.

The first temple we entered was the Middle Kingdom temple built by Amenemhet III and his son and co-regent Amenemhet IV of Dynasty XII. I was delighted to see reliefs in the three sanctuaries of this temple, which is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and Renenutet, the snake-headed goddess of fertility and the harvest. The reliefs were very worn but also very rare as Renenutet is seldom seen in temples. The goddess was known to have a strong cult here at Medinet Madi where her role as protector of crops would stem from the large-scale crop production in Faiyum. There were also cartouches of Amenemhet III and IV carved on the sanctuary walls. The temple was restored during Dynasty XIX and greatly expanded during the Graeco-Roman Period. Back to back with the Middle Kingdom temple is a Ptolemaic addition which contains an altar and some Greek inscriptions. It was on the wall in this part that we found a large relief of Sobek, in human form with a crocodile head and a wonderful toothy crocodile grin. The gafir told us that the Italian archaeologists recently uncovered a Ptolemaic gate to the east of the temple and on further investigation another temple dedicated to Sobek was discovered beneath the rubble. This second temple was built of mudbrick with stone doorways and lintels, with its axis at right-angles to the older temple. Tablets and papyri were also found in the debris, including an important oracular document written in demotic script. On the north side of the temple court, a crocodile nursery was discovered with dozens of eggs in different stages of maturation. Medinet Madi, whose modern name means ‘city of the past’, was known in Graeco-Roman times as ‘Narmouthis’. Excavators have discovered two separate towns at the site, though little of these was in evidence today and I imagined that the encroaching sand blown across the site on the desert winds had covered them all over again.

It was a long walk back to the cars on the other side of the ridge and then another long drive to Umm el-Baragat, the site of the Graeco-Roman town of Tebtunis. We travelled back towards Medinet el-Faiyum before following country tracks through many poor-looking villages to a village called Tutin from where we followed a canal until we got to the edge of the desert again. The cars pulled up by a little mosque and we had another long walk across the sand until we eventually reached the paved processional way to the temple. It’s funny how the police escort who are guarding us never bother to come along if there’s any walking involved. We were met by two guardians who showed us around the large town site.

Tebtunis, one of the largest Graeco-Roman towns in Faiyum, is thought to have originated in the New Kingdom but all the extant remains date to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. There has been a lot of restoration here, especially at the domestic site where several Roman villas have been reconstructed, their low walls, many of which still have some plaster and paint, have been consolidated and capped for protection. We entered the site along the processional way to the little Ptolemaic to Greek Period temple dedicated to Soknebtynis (‘Sobek, Lord of Tebtunis’) which was guarded by two yellow limestone lion statues. At the southern end of temple area, several large fine white limestone columns, of Greek style, have been reconstructed in a court on the western axis of the building. The domestic site was quite extensive and very interesting, with small dwellings and large villas clearly laid out and in one part we saw a stone-lined construction that we were told were Roman baths. Umm el-Baragat was home to a vast crocodile cemetery where over 1000 mummified crocodiles and sarcophagi were found by the earliest excavators, Grenfell and Hunt of the EES. In 1900 there was also one of those frequent ‘happy accident’ finds that Egypt is well-known for. A workman found one of the crocodile mummies (which had been considered worthless) to be wrapped in sheets of papyrus and together with many other fragments of papyrus found by excavators in the town’s houses, they became known collectively as the Tebtunis Papyri. The ‘Tebtunis Papyri’ consisted of a small library which contained numerous literary, medical and administrative documents as well as religious texts from the temple.

By the time we had walked around the whole site the sun was already going down and Sam, Jane and I were feeling pretty tired. No wonder the policemen had opted to stay by their car and drink tea! But it has been a really good day and to finish we stopped at Medinet el-Faiyum for a leisurely coffee on the way back to our hotel.

The day began with a lovely drive west along the lakeside as far as a little village called Tunis where there were many splendid and expensive looking villas, perhaps holiday properties owned by the rich and famous of Cairo. Right at the end of Birket Qarun our taxi with its accompanying tourist police truck turned down a sandy track leading to the temple of Qasr Qarun. The temple is undergoing restoration by the Egyptian Antiquities Service and looks like a building site.

Qasr Qarun is another temple dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek (here called Suchos) who was very popular in the Faiyum. It was built during the Late Period and surrounded by a town site, now mostly buried beneath the encroaching desert, that was in ancient times known as Dionysias and was the beginning of the caravan route to Bahriya Oasis. Dionysias was founded in the 3rd century BC. As we walked along the track, the temple appeared as a large rectangular uninscribed facade before us, constructed from yellow limestone blocks and didn’t look particularly interesting. Once inside the building however, it was a warren of chambers and corridors, that were being rebuilt. At present only the sanctuary area seems to make any sense. There were staircases going down into crypts and up onto the roof and we ran about exploring – Sam had challenged Jane and I to find the only existing relief left in the temple. We eventually found the relief up in the roof sanctuary; a worn carving of the god Suchos and the lower half of an un-named Ptolemy. From the roof there was a view over the whole town site and we could see the outline of a second smaller mudbrick temple nearby beneath the sand, which dates to the Roman Period. There was also a fortress that we could just see to the west, constructed by the Emperor Diocletian to protect the town against invading Bedouin tribes. It is now fairly ruined with really only the square towers on the corners showing but apparently it still has the remains of a Christian basilica inside.

Time to move on. We were on our way to the Wadi ar-Rayyan on the southern edge of Faiyum, but we stopped on the road-side to take a picture of another site, Medinet Wafta, which was inaccessible, though we could see the town-mound across the desert. This was the site of the ancient town of Philoteras. Another 20km along a straight new tarmac road bounded on either side by endless sand hills and we reached Wadi Rayyan, a recently developed national park where many Egyptian tourists come to walk, swim or take rowing boats out on the lakes. The two large lakes are artificial, made by allowing surplus water to drain from Birket Qarun down to the empty depression of Wadi Rayyan. A small river connects the northern and southern lake and here we found Egypt’s only waterfall. At a height of around three metres I thought it a little disappointing, but the setting was pretty, a little strange and very unusual for Egyptian countryside. The lakes are incongruously surrounded by large sand dunes as well as the wetlands and reed beds that are the habitation of many rare birds in the winter. There are a couple of mountain ranges surrounding the region and pictures I saw on a tourist map show strange rock formations, but we didn’t have time to explore the area. Not far away is the Wadi al-Hitan where 40 million-year-old whale skeletons have been found and which is also part of this protectorate known as the ‘Valley of the Whales’. Our policemen seemed happy to be here and sat on chairs on the little ‘beach’ in front of the lake while Sam, Jane, Abdul and I went for a coffee in the huge cafeteria. There were many Egyptian tourists there, probably still on their Christmas holiday.

We drove on to the southern end of the lakes and shortly turned off to another archaeological site called Qasr Banat, ancient Euphemeria, where there is a temple of Sobek and Isis, but we were not allowed to visit the temple and had to be content to take photographs at a distance across the fields. Batn Ihrit was our next stop, site of the ancient town of Theadelphia, a garrison town situated on the opposite border of the Faiyum to Philadelphia in the east. Also like Philadelphia it was named in honour of Arsinoe, sister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The site of Theadelphia contains the scant remains of a mudbrick gateway to the Ptolemaic temple dedicated to Pnepheros, an aspect of Sobek the crocodile-god. Although there are few remains of the temple, several artefacts found here are now at Cairo Museum. These include a wooden door donated to the temple by a citizen from Alexandria in 137 BC and a portable barque shrine for the god as well as frescoes from the temple walls. There was little for us to see here today except a vast pottery-strewn area with many large grave-pits on the edge of the desert and a separate building, a strange wall with arches that we were told was a Roman bath-house.

Back at the hotel Sam, Jane and I got together to discuss what to do next. We had originally planned only to spend a couple of nights here at Birket Qarun and then move on, but Jane and I declared that we want to stay here longer. I couldn’t bear to leave our gorgeous suite and the peaceful haven of the lake just yet, even though it is a long way to the rest of the sites we want to visit in Faiyum.

We’d arranged with the police to leave the hotel this morning on our first site visit at 9.00am but when Jane and I turned up for breakfast to meet Sam, she had already been joined by Abdul and Mr Ashraf, the Chief of the Tourist police. We had thought that he had come to organise our day – but he and Abdul sat talking for ages and it wasn’t until 10.30am that we were eventually allowed to leave. Breakfast, however, was excellent.

Our first visit was to Kom Ushim and we drove back north-east along the edge of the lake the way we had arrived yesterday as far as the entrance to Faiyum on the desert road. This was where the cultivated land ended and the desert began, with a huge mound which was once the largest of the Graeco-Roman town sites in this area. The town’s ancient name was Karanis and its now-scattered ruins were inhabited for seven centuries. A truckload of tourist police followed our taxi onto the site, pulling up outside a block built structure that turned out to be a small museum. There were several carved blocks and huge stone vessels lying haphazardly on the ground in front of the building, but the museum itself was very good and even had two of the Faiyum mummy masks on dislplay.

The town was built on a large ‘Kom’, a mound that was the home to two temples and it was the larger southern temple we first went to see. Probably overlaying an earlier temple, this ruined limestone structure was built during the Ptolemaic period towards the end of the first century AD and seemed to follow the standard plan of a traditional Egyptian temple with a paved courtyard, hall, vestibule and sanctuary, though none were decorated. In the walls of the vestibule there are deep niches which, we were told, would have contained mummified crocodiles, for this was a temple dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek or Suchos who was worshipped here as Pnepheros and Petesuchos. Many mummified crocodiles were also found in the land surrounding the temple. In this part of the temple the walls are only a couple of metres high, but the sanctuary still contains a huge stone altar which has a hidden chamber underneath that was probably used by the priests to deliver oracles. A large stone gate marks the entrance to the southern temple which bears a worn inscription of the Emperor Nero, usurped by Claudius. Another large gate to the east beyond a small sacred lake was built by Vespasian. We went up onto the roof of the temple from where we had a great view over the whole site and the land to the south. My goodness – there seemed to be gun-toting policemen on every hill and I wondered whether they were guarding us or their antiquities.

The town itself, which originally would have been on the shores of Lake Qarun, is said to have been founded by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the 3rd century BC, primarily as a garrison for his troops, but it prospered and grew, probably because of its accessibility from more populated cities to the north. The houses are arranged in clusters around the two main thoroughfares which run from north to south and range in style from simple mudbrick dwellings to the more elaborate villas of the high-status officials. Remains of millstones and olive presses still lie on the ground and ten large granaries and seven smaller ones have been found here as well as six dovecotes, similar to those seen in the Faiyum today suggesting that the Karanis was mainly a farming community.

The northern temple, constructed on an earlier site, also dates to the end of the 1st century AD, but has no inscriptions at all. This grey limestone structure faces north, is smaller than the southern temple and was once surrounded by a mudbrick temenos wall which is now mostly destroyed. There are two small entrance pylons and the outer corners of the temple are decorated with four slender columns. A large stone altar, also with an oracle niche, dominates the sanctuary. In addition to the cult of the crocodile-god, Karanis is known to have had devotees of the divine triad of Isis, Serapis, and Harpocrates, as well as numerous other ‘domestic gods’, both Egyptian and Greek, in fact 27 different Egyptian, Greek or Roman deities are recorded here. The town has been excavated several times and has provided a very valuable source of information on everyday life, religious cults, administration and industries during the Graeco-Roman Period. There have also been numerous papyri and documents found – excellently preserved due to Egypt’s dry climate – which have the special significance of being able to be read in context with the architecture and artefacts of the town remains.

A couple of hours later we were back in the taxi and with our police escort and driving alongside a canal about 15km to the next site, Kom el-Atl, which we were told, is pronounced ‘Kom el-Asl’ by the locals. This is another town mound, called Bacchius in ancient times. We stopped at a gafir’s hut and he took us on a tour of the massive site, again in ruins with many remains of low mudbrick walls stretching across the sandy hills. It was difficult to see what was going on here. Our guide the gafir, silently led us between the heaps of bricks and waited a few minutes before taking off to the next hill. We were also accompanied around the site by a wolf, who kept just a few metres ahead of us all the time and if he got too close the gafir threw stones in his direction and he would run a little further away again to stand and wait for us. The police seemed not to be in evidence here.

Once a border town on the desert road from Memphis, the small community of Bacchius which was built on top of an earlier prehistoric settlement, was also founded in the Ptolemaic Period around the 3rd century BC and abandoned in the 4th century AD. As well as much evidence of housing, there is also a very large mudbrick structure, once thought to be a temple but since another stone temple has recently been discovered here the excavators now believe the mudbrick structure to have been temple store-rooms. The oddly-shaped stone temple, found in 1993, is thought to have been dedicated to Soknobkonneus, a form of Sobek. Many Greek and Roman papyri have been found at Kom el-Atl, as well as coins, mummy portrait masks and fragments of statues. The excavators have also uncovered foundations of a large well-built structure of some importance with remains of inlaid wooden furniture and pottery lamps. The whole site, which stretches over many smaller mounds, is strewn with pottery sherds and it was a long and tiring walk around it.

Our next stop, not far away, was the town-site of Kom el-Hamman, also known as el-Roda or Kom el-Kharaba el-Kebir, which means the ‘Great Hill of Ruins’. When we pulled up I couldn’t see why we had stopped here because there was just a large stretch of empty desert, but on looking more closely the whole area was covered by broken pot-sherds. Here lay the ancient town of Philadelphia, named after Ptolemy II who founded it. Although there is little to see this is an important site known to archaeologists as a ‘model town’ set up by Apollonius, a minister of the Pharaoh. It was here that most of the famous Faiyum mummy portraits were found, discovered by locals in the 19th century while taking fertiliser for their fields and bought by a European dealer, who subsequently sold them to various museums. Many papyri have also been found at this site, including the archive of Zeno, a steward of Apollonius, who kept records of his correspondence filled with details of agricultural production. These records have provided a great deal of information about the management of a Ptolemaic town and daily life in this farming community. While it was an evocative place to discuss, we didn’t stay long as there really was nothing to see other than the faint marks of walls beneath the lonely desert.

The police chief wanted to stop for coffee on the way back to our hotel, so Abdul, Sam, Jane and I piled into a cafe with Mr Ashraf and left the half a dozen other policemen sitting in their truck. It was only when we got back to the Panorama at 5.00pm that we realised that today is the Coptic Christmas Day. We had intended to have dinner in the hotel but it was packed with Egyptians out to celebrate the festive occasion, so it was back to Medinet el-Faiyum again – another hour’s drive. This time we had two policemen with us in the car. There were a few problems in the city as the police tried to tell us where we could go to eat and I began to feel like we were prisoners let out on parole. It certainly isn’t a place that feels welcoming to tourists.

Abdul and his Peugeot taxi were parked outside the Ciao Hotel and we were all loaded up and ready to move. It had taken a while because our driver had decided to have the taxi serviced early this morning because he wanted to make sure everything was just right for our journey, so it wasn’t until 11.00am, with Sam in the front, Jane and I in the back and all our luggage piled high behind us that we set off through the busy Cairo streets on our way to the Faiyum. We drove out to Giza and down al-Haram, the Pyramids Road, under thick heavy clouds with rain threatening. Then we were on the new fast road to Faiyum and we even caught a glimpse of Meidum Pyramid over to our left rising through the mist.

We hadn’t pre-booked a hotel, preferring to wait and see what was available, with the idea of perhaps staying by the Lake, but the police at the first checkpoint we stopped at had other ideas and tried to insist we went into Faiyum City to a tourist hotel of their choice. Sam has been here before and knew the hotel the police suggested. She definitely didn’t want to stay there and held out for the lake. After quite a bit of argument (Sam has a real stubborn streak) they agreed to escort us out to the lake to the Panorama Hotel at Shakshouk.

The large lake of Birket Qarun is on the northwest edge of Faiyum and has a developing tourist industry which we could see from the number of smart hotels and apartments being built. We had followed the police truck along roads bounded on either side by agricultural fields through the area known as ‘the garden of Egypt’ which provides much of the country’s fruit and vegetables, wheat, rice and cotton, as well as dates from the many groves of palm trees. After driving all the way along the eastern shore of the lake we arrived at the Panorama Hotel to find a lovely low modern building right on the lakeside and we all trooped into the reception area. The hotel rates were much more than we were used to paying for rooms but Sam and Abdul between them managed to negotiate ‘Egyptian’ rates for us at EL110 per night. As Jane and I had already decided to share a room this didn’t seem too bad and got even better when we reached our assigned room and I immediately fell in love with it. In fact, it wasn’t just a room but a whole suite, with a huge bedroom, lounge and bathroom under high domed ceilings and curving archways it and even had a little terrace outside that overlooked the lake. There were comfy sofas and armchairs and a little kitchen area with a fridge. I think it’s going to be difficult when the time comes to move on from here.

Birket Qarun supports a small fishing industry and I went out with my camera just before sunset to the little beach to see the tiny colourful boats coming in with their catch. The sky was a blaze of colour as the sun went down, the shimmering blue turning first to a pale delicate apricot and then quickly deepening to an incredible dark red. It really was a heavenly sight. A little later we drove back to Medinet al-Faiyum (the capital, Faiyum City) which is towards the centre of the oasis with all the roads radiating from it like spokes in a wheel. We had been informed that we were not allowed to go anywhere without a police escort and so we had to take a policeman with us in the car and also to eat with us. Our policeman was very grumpy and obviously didn’t like this job of being our nursemaid. He spoke no English and our attempts to make conversation were studiously ignored. While we ate dinner in a restaurant he sat at a nearby table and glared at us and when we all went to a coffee shop later he sat apart and glared at us some more. I’m sure he could have been a little more friendly, but he refused everything we offered him. During the course of the evening we were entertained by a man in the coffee shop, whose party trick was to bend coins in half with his teeth. It made my own teeth ache just watching him. By the time we left the city at midnight it was freezing cold and all the locals were shrouded in woolly scarves wrapped tightly around their heads and most had several warm shawls draped around their shoulders too. I even began to feel sorry for our policeman who had probably never come across western tourists here before who actually wanted to leave the confines of their hotel. On the drive back we saw two small wolves run across the road ahead of us and Abdul told us that Faiyum still has many wild wolves (or maybe they were wolverines). It was an exciting end to the day.

Posts navigation

Advertisements

Search this Site

All content and photographs on this web log are copyright and may not be reproduced for any purpose without the written permission of the copyright holder. Please respect my personal text and photographs.